


night terrors

by just_one_iota



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24704650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_one_iota/pseuds/just_one_iota
Summary: Elrond has seen too much to leave it all behind.
Relationships: Celebrían/Elrond Peredhel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	night terrors

There is something wrong with his skin.

It is buzzing. It is screaming. His head is full of sound, but his ears pick up only the dead near-silence of the ink-blue night. It’s not black anymore- there can’t be more than a few hours until sunrise.

He realises that he is shivering. That shouldn't be surprising, given that he’s sitting on an open windowsill with his legs dangling out clad only in his nightgown. The tips of his ears are beginning to ache with the cold. His toes are numb. When he looks at them, on the end of his swinging feet, they feel like a separate body. They sway above the ground where the far away bushes rustle their leaves.

The night is hissing at him. There are voices, whispering and considering and cursing and snapping like saliva-dripping jaws. Someone is howling. Someone is moaning, or that may be the earth or the trees. (They’re breathing.) He knows it isn’t real. It doesn’t help. They’re still in his head.

“Elrond?” says a voice from behind him. Someone is stroking his arm, but no one is. His mouth tastes of pine burning, the ash and flesh. His loose hair slips over his shoulders as he turns to look, and in the doorway Celebrian stands beautiful.

There are electric shocks under his fingertips. His mouth is ashy and dry, and he wants to say _I’m sorry I’m sorry_ over and over again.

They told him when he was a child to stop doing that. They said it wasn’t his fault. He used to whisper that to himself over and over before he went to sleep. It did not make the feeling come back into his hands. It did not make them less cold.

“Elrond,” Celebrian says again softly. She steps towards him through a pool of light. All her features shift as the shadows turn her to a mirage or a dream. Then she is through the light, and it is gone.

It was like looking at her face under water. Somewhere, something is screaming.

“Are you alright?” she asks in her precious voice that never hurts. Her eyes are silver and kind. She kneels next to him and takes his hand. Some part of him wonders when she got that close. (He knows exactly when. He is hyperaware of her, of every movement in a still room.)

“I am well,” he tries to say, but instead he says, “I will be well,” and reaches out for a lock of her silver hair. When his fingertips touch it, they tingle a little.

A crisp breeze sweeps through the room from the open window. The curtains flutter.

“I am here,” Celebrian tells him, looking up with her whole radiant face. He wonders again how people can look at them and think that he is the holy one. “I am real. I will stay with you until it’s over.”

Something hurts in his chest at that, but it’s better than feeling nothing at all. He lifts his wife’s hand to his lips and kisses the back of it. Suddenly, he feels like curling into her body and crying.

She settles on the floor and rests her head against the side of his thigh. He can’t look out the window, because he is consumed by her. His eyes track over her a thousand times, and love her more with each one.

He’s still numb. He’s feeling the cold a little more now, raising goosebumps along his arms.

(No other elf he knows gets goosebumps.)

Her hand is warm. She strokes her thumb over the back of his. He is somehow vaguely surprised to not see stardust in its wake.

Elrond. His name is Elrond. The voices are still whispering somewhere, but he can hear that the night is quiet now. Gil-galad is no longer standing over his shoulder. He can smell the pine and burning flesh no more.

“You’re the best wife I could have asked for,” Elrond whispers to his love where her gown is draped across the floor like petals.

She smiles up at him. “You never needed to ask.”

Touch still feels strange. There are pins and needles under his skin. He takes her face between his hands and bends down to kiss her. Her skin is soft and smells of her unique scent where it presses so close to his own. Her eyelashes catch on his cheek. Her breath is on his skin. It is real.

Elrond curls his fingers into hers. 

“Let’s go back to bed," he whispers into the quiet, and they stand slowly.

The dark stays behind them when they walk away. It does not stay like tar sticking on the surface of all the world, clinging on when you had thought it gone: it falls to the dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr here https://the-quiet-fire-of-defiance-is-me.tumblr.com/


End file.
